When starting the module for the first time, the Samba Installation dialog starts, prompting you to make a few basic decisions concerning administration of the server. At the end of the configuration it prompts for the Samba administrator password (Samba Root Password). For later starts, the Samba Configuration dialog appears.

The Samba Installation dialog consists of two steps and optional detailed settings:

If you do not want to proceed with a detailed server configuration, confirm with OK. Then in the final pop-up box, set the Samba root Password.

You can change all settings later in the Samba Configuration dialog with the Start-Up, Shares, Identity, Trusted Domains, and LDAP Settings tabs.

During the first start of the Samba server module the Samba Configuration dialog appears directly after the two initial steps described in Section 21.4.1.1, “Initial Samba Configuration”. Use it to adjust your Samba server configuration.

After editing your configuration, click OK to save your settings.

The following parameters of the [global] section need some adjustment to match the requirements of your network setup so other machines can access your Samba server via SMB in a Windows environment.

The following examples illustrate how a CD-ROM drive and the user directories (homes) are made available to the SMB clients.

To improve security, each share access can be protected with a password. SMB offers the following ways of checking permissions:

The selection of share, user, server, or domain level security applies to the entire server. It is not possible to offer individual shares of a server configuration with share level security and others with user level security. However, you can run a separate Samba server for each configured IP address on a system.

More information about this subject can be found in the Samba 3 HOWTO. For multiple servers on one system, pay attention to the options interfaces and bind interfaces only.

Snapshots on a Samba server can be exposed to remote Windows clients as file or directory previous versions.

To enable snapshots on a Samba server, the following conditions must be fulfilled:

To support remote snapshots, you need to modify the /etc/samba/smb.conf file. You can do it either with YaST › Network Services › Samba Server, or manually by enhancing the relevant share section with

vfs objects = snapper

Note that you need to restart the Samba service for manual smb.conf changes to take effect:

systemctl restart nmb smb

Figure 21.4: Adding a New Samba Share with Snapshotting Enabled #

After being configured, snapshots created by snapper for the Samba share path can be accessed from Windows Explorer from a file or directory's Previous Versions tab.

Figure 21.5: The Previous Versions tab in Windows Explorer #

By default, snapshots can only be created and deleted on the Samba server locally, via the snapper command line utility, or using snapper's time line feature.

Samba can be configured to process share snapshot creation and deletion requests from remote hosts using the File Server Remote VSS Protocol (FSRVP).

In addition to the configuration and prerequisites documented in Section 21.8.2.1, “Previous Versions”, the following global configuration is required in /etc/samba/smb.conf:

[global]
rpc_daemon:fssd = fork
registry shares = yes
include = registry

FSRVP clients, including Samba's rpcclient and Windows Server 2012 DiskShadow.exe, can then instruct Samba to create or delete a snapshot for a given share, and expose the snapshot as a new share.

The samba-client package contains an FSRVP client that can remotely request a Windows/Samba server to create and expose a snapshot of a given share. You can then use existing tools in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to mount the exposed share and back up its files. Requests to the server are sent using the rpcclient binary.

# rpcclient -U 'EXAMPLE\Administrator' ncacn_np:win-server.example.com[ndr64,sign]
Enter EXAMPLE/Administrator's password:

rpcclient $> netshareenum
netname: windows_server_2012_share
remark:
path:   C:\Shares\windows_server_2012_share
password:       (null)

rpcclient $> fss_is_path_sup windows_server_2012_share \
UNC \\WIN-SERVER\windows_server_2012_share\ supports shadow copy requests

rpcclient $> fss_create_expose backup ro windows_server_2012_share
13fe880e-e232-493d-87e9-402f21019fb6: shadow-copy set created
13fe880e-e232-493d-87e9-402f21019fb6(1c26544e-8251-445f-be89-d1e0a3938777): \
\\WIN-SERVER\windows_server_2012_share\ shadow-copy added to set
13fe880e-e232-493d-87e9-402f21019fb6: prepare completed in 0 secs
13fe880e-e232-493d-87e9-402f21019fb6: commit completed in 1 secs
13fe880e-e232-493d-87e9-402f21019fb6(1c26544e-8251-445f-be89-d1e0a3938777): \
share windows_server_2012_share@{1C26544E-8251-445F-BE89-D1E0A3938777} \
exposed as a snapshot of \\WIN-SERVER\windows_server_2012_share\

rpcclient $> netshareenum
netname: windows_server_2012_share
remark:
path:   C:\Shares\windows_server_2012_share
password:       (null)

netname: windows_server_2012_share@{1C26544E-8251-445F-BE89-D1E0A3938777}
remark: (null)
path:   \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy{F6E6507E-F537-11E3-9404-B8AC6F927453}\Shares\windows_server_2012_share\
password:       (null)

rpcclient $> fss_delete windows_server_2012_share \
13fe880e-e232-493d-87e9-402f21019fb6 1c26544e-8251-445f-be89-d1e0a3938777
13fe880e-e232-493d-87e9-402f21019fb6(1c26544e-8251-445f-be89-d1e0a3938777): \
\\WIN-SERVER\windows_server_2012_share\ shadow-copy deleted

rpcclient $> netshareenum
netname: windows_server_2012_share
remark:
path:   C:\Shares\windows_server_2012_share
password:       (null)

You can manage snapshots of SMB shares on the Linux Samba server from the Windows environment acting as a client as well. Windows Server 2012 includes the DiskShadow.exe utility that can manage remote shares similar to the rpcclient described in Section 21.8.2.3, “Managing Snapshots Remotely from Linux with rpcclient”. Note that you need to carefully set up the Samba server first.

Following is an example procedure to set up the Samba server so that the Windows Server client can manage its share's snapshots. Note that EXAMPLE is the Active Directory domain used in the testing environment, fsrvp-server.example.com is the host name of the Samba server, and /srv/smb is the path to the SMB share.